Plains Indian (also
called North American Plains or Buffalo Indian) is any member of various
tribes of American Indians that formerly inhabited the Great Plains of
what is now the central United States and south-central Canada, between
the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

Most of the Plains
Indians were nomadic big-game hunters, and their primary game was the
American bison, or buffalo, which supplied them with food, shelter, clothing,
and bone tools. Other game included antelope, deer, and elk. Hunting,
usually a tribal activity, involved driving the game down a cliff or into
a corral or encircling it by fire.

Until the late
16th century the Great Plains were occupied only sparsely or intermittently.
Toward the year 1600, however, Spanish horses were introduced and spread
northward from the region of New Mexico, reaching almost the entire Plains
area by 1750.

Horses and firearms
revolutionized the buffalo hunt. The horse made it possible to approach
the herd quickly and without disguises. It also seems to have drawn peoples
from surrounding areas into the plains to develop a new way of life. Thus,
most tribes thought by Europeans to be typical nomadic horse Indians--such
as the Cheyenne, Arapaho,
and Dakota (Sioux)--were actually newcomers
to the area and had been farmers and village dwellers not many generations
before their first European contacts.

The nomadic tribes
were made up of smaller local units called bands, which came together
only for the summer communal hunt or for major religious ceremonies. The
Teton Sioux, Cheyenne,
Comanche, and Crow were
typical nomadic tribes. A few tribes, though mainly nomadic, practiced
horticulture, produced pottery, and resided in fixed villages for part
of the year. These semisedentary tribes spent part of the time planting
and harvesting crops, which consisted of corn (maize), beans, squash,
and sunflowers. The Pawnee, Mandan,
Hidatsa, and Arikara
were typical semisedentary tribes.

There were no
hereditary social classes among the Plains Indians, although wealth and
standing could be won through prowess at war, generosity to the poor,
sharing goods with relatives, and lavish hospitality. Because individualism
and fighting were highly valued by almost every tribe, military organizations
and clubs were often established in order to channel intratribal aggressiveness.

Local bands and
villages were composed of families and kinship groups, which could be
patrilineal (as among the Iowa, Kansa, Omaha, Osage,
and Ponca), matrilineal (as among the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Crow),
or both. Marriages were generally monogamous and were ordinarily arranged
between the families of the bride and groom. Children were trained for
adult pursuits as part of their play, and relatives often played important
roles in their upbringing. Boys were given bows and arrows at a very early
age, while girls were taught domestic skills by their mothers.

Before the appearance
of European explorers, the Plains Indians made tools of bone, horn, antler,
and stone. Animal skins were used for clothing, receptacles of various
kinds, and tepees, which were portable, cone-shaped tents. Basketry and
pottery were known among the semisedentary tribes. Until horses were introduced
by the Spaniards, dogs were probably the only domesticated animals. The
introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Plains life, revolutionizing
the hunt and warfare and providing a valuable commodity for both trade
and theft, the latter stimulating warfare.

Although some
tribes, such as the Atsina*, believed in a supreme deity, other tribes,
such as the Crow, did not. However, rituals ranging from simple rites
to ceremonies lasting weeks were common to almost all of the Plains Indians.
All of the Plains tribes had medicine men, or shamans, who were responsible
for such activities as curing illness and locating enemies, game, or lost
objects. Much importance was attached to spiritual visions, and success
in life was attributed to the intervention of friendly spirits.

The culture of
the Plains Indians changed radically as white settlers moved into the
region. The nomadic Indians' hunting economy collapsed when the buffalo
was virtually exterminated in the late 19th century, and native crafts
declined as manufactured articles, such as metal utensils and cloth, were
introduced. Introduced diseases and warfare with whites reduced Indian
populations, and even greater disturbances resulted when the Indians were
placed on reservations. Nomadic Indians found cattle a poor replacement
for buffalo, and semisedentary groups, who considered cultivation to be
women's work, resisted the change in the division of labour brought on
by the introduction of the plow. Deprived of their traditional culture,
many Indians became demoralized and came to depend on government aid for
their subsistence.

**Atsina: also
called Gros Ventres Of The Prairie, an offshoot of the Algonquian-speaking
Arapaho tribe of North American Indians, from
which they may have separated as early as 1700; they were living in what
is now northern Montana and adjacent regions of Canada in late historic
times and were culturally similar to other Plains tribes. Together with
the Assiniboin, they were settled on Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana,
where the combined population totalled fewer than 2,000 in the late 20th
century.